Richard Ashcroft: 'Nostalgia Is Suffocating Festivals'

Richard Ashcroft has said that he is not interested in reforming The Verve and headlining festivals with the band while new groups are being denied the same slots. 

Ashcroft spoke to BBC 6Music's Lauren Laverne earlier this month and was quizzed on the possibility of fans seeing The Verve play again and if they were playing together at all. 

Flatly denying the rumours, Ashcroft said: "It's not happening. You have to be real in life and I'm proud that we went in and recorded new material. The whole nostalgia thing is getting suffocating and it's difficult for younger acts, especially at festivals."

Explaining what he had said, Ashcroft continued: "If you look at some of the line-ups, I'm not ageist by any means, but it's dominated by nostalgia. We need the youth to create their own version of what may potentially become nostalgic but if they haven't got a place to do that because they're dominated by these big monster dinosaur acts, mopping up all the money."

Revealing that he is working on a new United Nations of Sound album, Ashcroft confirmed that fans will hear new music from him in 2013. "I've just been working for the past six, seven months in my cellar. I'm really excited, we should get the first potential tune in September. I'm just putting everything into it at the moment." The first, self-titled, United Nations of Sound album was released in 2010.

Taking a potshot at Blur frontman Damon Albarn, the singer added: "The great thing about the United Nations of Sound album is that because it wasn't something written by Damon Albarn it wasn't front page news or anything. None of my followers are sheep, nobody has been told to follow Richard Ashcroft since 'Urban Hymns' came out. Richard Ashcroft has never been in fashion. A lot of other artists feed off being the right people at the right time but to be able to play a gig 15 or 20 years later and have people sing your songs goes beyond fashion."

Richard Ashcroft was one of the performers at this weekend's Latitude Festival. The Suffolk event was headlined by Bloc Party, Kraftwerk and Foals.